“Silver blackens the salt of friendship,” he would say.

Dora Parse was driving her own wardo, a very fine one which had belonged to her mother.  Lester Montague, of Sea Tack, Maryland, who makes the wagons of Romanys for all the Atlantic coast tribes, like his father before him, had done an especially good job of it.  The princess had been certified, by the Romany rites, to old John’s eldest son, George, for she had flatly refused to be married according to the gorgio ways.  Not having been married a full year, he was not yet entitled to carry the heavy, silver-topped stick which is the badge of the married man, nor could he demand a place in his wife’s tent or wagon unless she expressly invited him.  Dora Parse and George Lane were passionately in love with each other, and their meeting and mating had been the flowering romance of the tribe, the previous summer.

The princess, being descended from a very old Romany family, as her name showed, was far higher in rank than any one in the Lane tribe.  Her aristocratic lineage showed in the set of her magnificent head, in the small, delicate fingers of her hand, and in the fire and richness of her eyes.  Also, her skin was of the colour of old ivory upon which is cast a distant, faint reflection of the sunset, and her mouth, thinner than those of most Romanys, was of the colour of a ripe pomegranate.

“A rauni, a puro rauni,” all the tribes of the eastern coast murmured respectfully, when Dora Parse’s name was mentioned.

She was, indeed, a very great lady, but she was a flirtatious and headstrong girl.  She was one of the few modern gypsies who still hold to the unadulterated worship of “those.”  All the members of John Lane’s tribe were Methodists—­had been since before they had migrated from England.  In every wagon, save Dora’s, a large illustrated Bible lay on a little table, and those who could, read them aloud to the rest of a Sunday afternoon.  This did not mean, however, that the Romanys had descended to gorgio ways, or that they had wholly left off their attentions to “those”.  They combined the two.  Old John was known as a fervent and eloquent leader in prayer at the Wednesday-night prayer meetings in the Maryland town where his church membership was held, but he had not ceased to carry the “box of meanings,” as befitted the chief of the tribe.

This was a very beautifully worked box of pure gold, made by the great Nikola of Budapest, whose boxes can be found inside the shirt of every gypsy chief, where they are always carried.  In them are some grains of wheat, garnered by moonlight, a peacock’s feather, and a small silver bell with a coiled snake for a handle.  When anything is to be decided, a few of the grains are taken out and counted.  If they are even, the omen is bad, but if they are odd, all is well.  Old John had an elastic and accommodating mind, like all Romanys, so he never thought it strange that he should ask the “box of meanings” whether or not it was going to storm on prayer-meeting nights.